Thanksgiving leftovers may still be with us, but Black Friday is gone and along with it the hoopla, big sales and crowded stores. What is left is a Christmas season with 26 days left.

While plenty of gifts were purchased over the weekend, most of us still have plenty of shopping to do and we encourage our readers to do most of that here at home in Perry County.

Shopping locally keeps more of your money here, benefiting not only local store owners and their employees, but the larger economy. As we learned in high-school economics, money recirculates many times over. Thus the person who buys locally helps the mom-and-pop business owner pay his or her employees. Those workers, in turn, use their paychecks locally at local restaurants, stores, doctors and dentists and elsewhere. It’s a cycle of commerce that keeps spinning.

Dollars spent in other communities don’t come back here.

We know many people who try to buy most of their holiday gifts in locally owned stores. We know it’s hard to do all of our shopping at home, especially for specialty items, but we encourage Perry Countians to shop here when possible.

Tell City has a very nice downtown, thanks to grant funding and wonderful community foresight. The businesses who anchor our downtown can only stay in business, grow and hire more people if they are supported by our dollars. It’s the same for grocery, gift, hardware, clothing and other stores elsewhere in town.

We suspect there aren’t many people on your wish list for which a gift can’t be found locally, and at an affordable price. And as a perk, shopping locally means you won’t have to search for parking spots in crowded lots, stand in long lines at registers or jostle with other shoppers.

Help your community. Shop locally. You’ll boost yourself, your friends and neighbors and our entire community. It’s a local gift that keeps on giving, long after the holidays are over.

Our view: Editorials reflect the opinions of the newspaper.

Your view: Tell us what you think. E-mail us at editor@perrycountynews.com or mail your comments to P.O. Box 309, Tell City, IN 47586.